4 Tips on How To Sell A Tenant-Occupied Property
Renting your property out can be a good bit of business. However, there’s a lot of work involved. As the landlord, you’re responsible for maintaining the property and making any repairs as soon as they are required. If you’ve had enough of being a landlord, you may want to sell the property. However, your tenant has rights that you need to keep in consideration. The following are four ways for dealing with your tenant if you plan on selling your property:
1. Give the tenant time to vacate
If your tenant is on a month-to-month lease, then you are required by law to provide the tenant with time to vacate. The amount of notice that you have to provide to your tenant varies by state. Usually, you’ll need to give either a 30- or a 60-day notice. The easiest way to show the property is to wait until the tenant has moved out. However, if you need to sell the property as quickly as possible, you may want to begin showing the property while the tenant is still living there. If you do this, you need to give your tenant at least 24 hours notice that you will be showing the house to potential buyers.
If your tenant is on a fixed-term lease, such as a one-year lease, then the tenant has the right to live out the remainder of the lease. The only way you can get around this is if the lease contains an early termination clause or if the tenant either failed to pay you rent or violated any of the terms of the lease, for example, keeping pets in the home if pets are explicitly forbidden.
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2. Sell your property to an investor
If you can’t wait for your tenant to move out because he or she still has a lengthy period of time left on their lease and they’ve done nothing to violate the terms of the lease, you may want to consider selling the property to a real estate investor. There may be buyers out there that are looking to invest in real estate in order to rent out and will be more than happy to purchase property that’s already occupied by a tenant. Of course, trying to sell to an investor like this is going to be somewhat challenging since you will be limited in the number of buyers that will be interested.
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3. Sell your property to the tenant
When you decide to sell your property, you’ll need to inform the tenant since they will need time to vacate. If they have a long time left on their lease, you can ask them if they are willing to leave early. If they do not want to leave the house, you could offer to sell the property to them. A tenant that has lived in your house for a while may strongly consider this. If they are unable to obtain a mortgage in order to purchase your property but are interested in doing so, you could act as both seller and lender by arranging for the tenant to make payments toward the purchase of the house.
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4. Provide an incentive for the tenant to leave
If the tenant has no interest in buying your property or leaving early, then you can try to provide them with an incentive to leave early. For example, you could offer to reduce rent if they agree to move out within a certain period of time. Or you could even offer to pay the tenant to leave. There are a few ways that you can do this. Look to see what rent is at other similar properties in your area. If rent is higher than what you’ve been charging, offer to pay the difference multiplied by the number of months left on your tenant’s lease, so that they don’t end up losing money moving into a new apartment. You could also offer to pay for their moving costs or even offer to pay the down payment on a different rental property.
Selling your property becomes a much more challenging task if you are currently renting it out to a tenant. These are a few ways that you can figure out a way to sell the property without violating the rights of your tenant.
